Brussels Taprooms

Zennebar is the Brasserie de la Senne taproom near Tour & Taxis. Mike, Rich, Pat & Jeff in foreground.

There are plenty of Brussels taprooms to visit including Cantillon, L'Ermitage and Brussels Beer Project but note that many are only open for limited hours. While some have closed (En Stoemelings, No Science), there are also some recent additions (de la Mule - 2021, Surrealiste - 2021). To avoid disappointment, it makes sense to check that a taproom will be open before visiting.

During a long weekend visit to Brussels (Thursday 6 - Sunday 9 March 2025), five members of a pub quiz team, usually at the Lion in Newbury on a Thursday, visited three contrasting brewery taprooms, starting with Brasserie Surrealiste, early on the Friday evening, before a meal at In't Spinnekopke.

Brasserie Surrealiste

Setting a very high bar, the Brasserie Surrealiste taproom in the Dansaert district could easily be mistaken for an exclusive restaurant. The bar and restaurant at 22 Place du Nouveau Marche au Grains, faces an attractive tree lined square. The impressive Art Deco building from 1932 was once a banana warehouse. There's a glazed entrance area with seating and tables, for adults only. 

Inside, the higher main area is mainly restaurant tables but there are also stools at the bar and some tables for bar customers which do not need reservations. There are ornate chandeliers and a variety of candles provide additional light. 

Taproom customers order and pay at the long bar, towards the back of the space. During the daily happy hour (5pm - 7pm), house beers are served in 40cl measures for the 25cl price. The timing of our visit was superb!

Our order of draught house beers included Dance Rave Dance (Session IPA) and Surrealiste Pale Ale both priced at €4.50. The menu on a clipboard mentions that Flights of three 12.5cl draught house beers for €10 can be ordered before 7pm. The Happy Hour offer does not apply to the barrel aged beers e.g. Baltic Porter 8.5% ABV aged for 18 months in Pinot Noir barrels (25cl €7).

Congratulations go to Brasserie Surrealiste for offering their quality beers at affordable prices in such a special taproom.

La Source Beer Co.

After a Saturday visit to the Atomium, we broke the return Metro journey to Brussels at Pannenhuis and walked from there to the warehouse style building once used for Byrrh vermouth.

It has been repurposed as Be-Here and now houses a variety of small businesses, a roller skating circuit and La Source Beer Co..

We had timed our arrival at La Source Beer Co for soon after the 2pm Saturday opening time but there was a delay at the bar due to payment equipment issues. This allowed time to look at some of the other outlets including a Bio-market selling produce and beers from local breweries. xx

When the bar was operational we chose beers listed on strips of blackboard behind the bar.

This 25cl serving of La Meute (6.5% ABV) Tropical Hazy IPA, hopped with Mosaic Cryo, Eldorado and Sorachi Ace (BE) was refreshing and cost €4.30. 

The light and airy taproom features a mixture of seating options, green plants and a table football game. We might have stayed longer and tried some more La Source beers but the loud heavy metal soundtrack was not ideal and we could not find any suitable lunchtime meals.

Brasserie de la Senne - Zennebar

An interesting walk to Brasserie de la Senne included a stop at Boulangerie Patisserie Bockstael for freshly prepared half baguette 'sandwiches', eaten from a bench with a view of a sculpture of Alexander Pushkin by Georgy Frangulyan. The route was then over the Jubilee bridge, marked by twin towers at each end and then following a path along the route of an old railway line through Park Tour & Taxis and past an obelisk for the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Arriving at Zennebar, the Brasserie de la Senne Taproom, we found it busier in the garden on the north west side than inside, on a relatively warm day. The bar system relies on customers ordering and paying at one end of the bar and then collecting beers at the other end by the beer fonts.

We picked a table, made from a cable drum, placed conveniently underneath a beer menu on a blackboard.

This position looks back at the bar and up to a mezzanine floor with oak barrels. xx

Petit Boulba + Jambe-de-Bois

Eoghan Walsh described Petit Boulba as 'a properly pintable beer' in a blog post for Brussels Beer City. Although lower strength (2.8% ABV) than Taras Boulba (4.5%) it was more expensive here (€3.00 v €2.50 for 25cl). Nevertheless it was an ideal opportunity to try it and decide that my next beer would be Jambe-de-Bois, a Belgian Tripel with more strength and sweetness! (€4.30 for 33cl). 

The graphic below from Brasserie de la Senne website includes the beers mentioned above.

Liege 2025

The curves of the new Liege-Guillemins station, designed by Santiago Calatrava have graced the city since it's opening in 2009. The major city in Wallonia is situated on the river Meuse, near Belgium's eastern borders with Germany (Aachen) and The Netherlands (Maastricht).

Views from the Namur to Liege train

Liege-Guillemins is normally served by two trains an hour from Namur taking 45-50 minutes for the journey that follows the north bank of the river Meuse. We arrived in Liege by train on the morning of Friday 31 January 2025. Passengers aged 65+ can make a return journey between any two Belgian cities for €8.50 with a Senior Ticket. Tram tracks now lie in front of the station but the start of the Liege tram service has been delayed until April 2025.

L'Aigle d'Or

Taverne L'Aigle d'Or is one of the few Wallonie bar cafes mentioned in Belgian Cafe Culture by Regula Ysewijn. Most of the iconic cafes in this handsome book are in Flanders.

Arriving here just before noon, we were able to find a table before customers began arriving at lunchtime. Blackboards list the lunchtime menu, large arches break the space into distinct areas, several tall fridges are stocked with a variety of beers, a partition separates the bar from the dining area with tables.

A bound menu includes details of 9 permanent draught beers and bottled beers. A further 11 variable draught beers are served.

Permanent draught beers include L'Aiglon, a 5.4% ABV Blonde brewed for the bar by Brasserie Minne. This was highly rated by Frank, a homebrewer from Aachen (humble_beer on Untappd).

Impressively, the menu page for Trappist beers includes 3 Westvleteren beers and Tynt Meadow. Music playing included Steppenwolf - Born to be Wild.

Museum La Bovarie + Madame Bovarie

After coffee at Aigle d'Or, we headed to Museum La Boverie (art gallery), crossing to the island part of Liege using the La Belle Liegeios footbridge which opened in 2016.

Artworks in the permanent collection include The Turnip Washer by Evariste Carpentier. 

The Museum La Boverie shop had a display of Brasserie Surrealiste beers for sale. 

The fridge at the Madame Bovarie 'sandwich shop' inside the museum building with views towards the river Meuse was well stocked.

For our first beers of the day we enjoyed locally brewed beers here. Blanche de Liege is a wheat beer brewed by Brasserie de l'Abbaye du Val-Dieu, 20 km north-east of Liege. Smash is a pale ale brewed with Mosaic hops by Brasserie (C) in Liege. A complimentary bowl of savoury snack biscuits was placed on our tray when we reached the payment point.

It was nice to see Le Plongeur et son arc in the distance, a 2000 replica of a 1939 artwork by Idel Ianchelevici featuring a diver on his hands on the tip of a white arc of a diving board on the opposite bank, as we walked northwards from La Boverie.

After crossing the Pont Albert 1 back to the west side of the river, we walked past the yacht harbour and then inland to Place Saint-Paul by the cathedral before continuing past the historic Taverne Saint-Paul to reach Le Pot au Lait.

Le Pot au Lait

A lengthy passage leads to Le Pot au Lait and there are exotic and colourful 3D murals to admire on the way.

The entrance to the bar is also elaborately and colourfully decorated.

Inside the lighting is dim and a variety of spooky and weird images and objects are displayed. There are plenty of different areas for seating and it was quite busy for an afternoon. Heavy metal music was playing. 

The beer menu offers good variety and value. Beers are ordered and paid for at the bar, which has a surface decorated with a colourful mosaic design..

Beers may be served in a standard stemmed glass as in the case of the Goliath Triple brewed by Brasserie des Legendes.

L'Annexe

To reach our final bar in Liege, L'Annexe, involved passing Au Delft by the university and recrossing the river Meuse on a footbridge - Passarelle Saucy.

L'Annexe is accessed from a narrow passageway (Rue Roture) that leads off a one way street (Rue Puits-en-Sock) and is situated across from Cafe Le Petit Bougnat. It's only open from 4pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

Blackboards against an internal brick wall by the bar list bottled / canned beers, cocktails (not shown above) and draught beers. The bar was very quiet so there was an opportunity to chat with Kenny the barman, from Mauritius. He went to the cellar to look for a beer from Misery Beer Co (as featured in Breandan Kearney's book Hidden Beers of Belgium). 

He returned with his last can of English Porter (€7) but sadly there was no Harzington 'inspired by the brewers of Vermont'. 

Instead Hazy Pale brewed by Norm Brewing, less than 2km away proved an excellent alternative. Kenny also gave us a complimentary dish of crisps. Music playing was laid back in style e.g. Ross David - Fire Burnin. 

The bar was still quiet when we left and in a heartwarming moment, Kenny handed me the can of Misery Beer Co English Porter as a gift, refusing to accept any payment for it. Cheers!

From here we caught a bus that took us over the Pont des Arches and dropped us near the imposing Palais Provincial. A short uphill walk leads to Liege-Saint-Lambert station which was undergoing building work and had no functioning platform indicators. Happily the train we boarded was bound for Brussels via Namur and we would arrive back in Namur in darkness.

Obviously, half a day is inadequate to explore Liege fully and it is a city destined for a future visit!

A separate blog post Namur 2025 features bars visited in Namur on this trip.